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Issue
No.5 Summer 2001
The
Act of Union 1801-2001
by
Gordon Lucy
Recent years have been marked by commemorations
of the 150th anniversary of the Great Famine and the bicentenary of the
1798 Rebellion. Until Michael McGimpsey, MLA, the Minister for Culture,
Arts and Leisure, launched a rolling programme of events in Newtownards
on 22 January, the 200th anniversary of the first meeting of the United
Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the Bicentenary
of the Act of Union, had received comparatively little attention apart
from two major academic conferences, one in Belfast, the other in Dublin.
However, the comparative lack of commemoration does not diminish the significance
of the event which was one of the most controversial and contested in
modern history.
Most historians would readily acknowledge the
importance of the Union. Oliver MacDonagh in Ireland: The Union and Its
Aftermath (1977) observed 'that The Act of Union forms the matrix of modem
Irish history'. Donal Mac Cartney in The Dawning of Democracy (1987) noted:
'Indeed Irish history, at least down to 1922, has been a history of Ireland
under the union. Every nationalist movement, whether
constitutional and parliamentary or republican and physical force, has
aimed at the abolition of the union. Every unionist movement has aimed
at its maintenance. The first principle for every political leader in
Irish history since 1800 has been his attitude to the union'.
More recently, Patrick Geoghegan in his splendid book, The Irish Act 0f
Union (1999), described the Act of Union as 'the defining event of modern
Irish history'. Irrespective of one's views on the Union, few people seriously
question it's importance in Irish history.
Regrettably, some people have voiced their opposition to any commemoration
of the Act of Union. It is a view to which they are perfectly entitled
but such people have a lot to learn about what it means to live in a plural
society. One might also tentatively suggest that, like the rest of us,
they might find the study of history rather more interesting and rewarding
than uncritical acceptance of popular prejudice and mythology. Others
have exhibited nervousness about controversy and debate. However, if we
seek to eschew controversy and debate we deprive history of its interest,
its excitement and its vitality. History does not consist of a body of
received opinion handed down by authority from the historiographical equivalent
of Mount Sinai or Olympus. Since our word 'History' is derived from the
Greek, the latter allusion is perhaps more apt. The Greek verb from which
history is derived means both 'I enquire¹ and 'I report upon my enquiry'.
The study of history is an enquiry, a search for knowledge and understanding.
And that is the spirit in which we should approach the Act of Union.
Count Cavour is, understandably, best remembered
as the principal architect of Italian unification and first prime minister
of a united Italy rather than as an intelligent and well-informed commentator
on Irish politics in the early 1840s. Nicholas Mansergh, father of Fianna
Fail's Dr Martin Mansergh, drew attention to this unfamiliar aspect of
Cavour's life in The Irish Question, 1840-1921(1975). At a time when most
Europeans would have been sympathetic towards Daniel O'Connell's campaign
for the Repeal of the Union, Cavour was an enthusiast for the Union because
it was in the best interests of Ireland, England and material and intellectual
civilisation'. Cavour regarded the Act of Union as an 'irreproachably
just' economic and political settlement of Anglo-Irish relations.
Nevertheless, for the better part of two centuries,
many Irish Nationalists have become dewy~eyed at the mere mention of the
eighteenth century Irish Parliament. They seem to lose sight of the fact
that it was exclusively Protestant in composition, not conspicuously liberal
in sentiment and, in 1799-1800, demonstrated itself to be venal and corrupt.
They seem to forget that the principle aim of the Society of United Irishmen
was the reform of that Parliament, a point illustrated by the United Irish
test. Failure to secure reform drove the United Irishmen into armed rebellion.
The Act of Union was the most important consequence of that rebellion.
As the United Irishmen had originally sought the reform of this Parliament,
many United Irishmen were not unhappy at its abolition, especially as
it held out the prospect of reform, Catholic emancipation and the liberalisation
of trade. By depriving so many boroughs of their parliamentary representation,
the Act of Union was, in effect, a significant measure of parliamentary
reform. Trade was liberalised. The Union's most obvious shortcoming was
that Catholic emancipation was delayed for a generation. In many respects
not a great deal separated the aspirations of the United Irishmen on one
hand and those of Pitt and Castlereagh, the twin architects of the Union,
on the other. Therefore, one should not be unduly surprised by the fact
that Samuel Neilson and Archibald Hamilton Rowan warmly welcomed the union.
They were not alone.
Nationalists have a jaundiced view of the Union.
They almost invariably regard the Union as the cause of economic decline.
In the past economic historians were prepared to endorse this view but
recent scholarship assesses the impact of the Union to have been either
neutral or even positive. For example, Cormac O'Grada, Ireland's leading
economic historian, in Ireland: A New Economic History, 1780-1939 (1994)
has written:
'Contrary to traditional Irish nationalist claims, the economic impact
of the Act of Union in the short term was minor. Manufacturing output
and trade continued to grow. Nor were fears of deindustrialisation to
the fore in the debate about the Union. In the event, even the removal
of the Dublin Lords and Commons had little evident effect on the Dublin
economy, partly because any resulting rise in gentry absenteeism was made
good for decades by an increasing military presence. The rise in the city's
population from 180,000 in the late 1700s to 231,600 in I82l was faster
than during the 1780s and 1790s, usually deemed decades of prosperity
and progress. In the countryside the high prices generated by the war
were a boon also to farmers and landlords. But the period was one in which
lots of things were happening at once - Industrial Revolution, war, political
change - making the analysis of any single factors role almost impossible².
The specific economic impact on Belfast requires special mention because
Belfast and its environs benefited enormously from the Union. As A.T.Q.
Stewart has observed: 'In 1792 Belfast could have been described as a
market town with harbour facilities, but by 1825 it had already assumed
its modern status as an industrial port'. In January 1841 Henry Cooke
repudiated Daniel O'Connell's case for Repeal of the Union by recourse
to Belfast's experience under the Union. When the Union came under threat
from the mid I880s onwards, Belfast Chamber of Commerce played an important
role in combating the Home Rule threat. The Chamber stressed that Ulster¹s
wealth and prosperity was due to the 'security and protection afforded
by Parliament since the Act of Union and the 'frugality and enterprise'
of its people.
Most Nationalists attribute failure of the Union
to deliver immediate Catholic emancipation to bad faith on the part of
Pitt and Castlereagh, the Chief Secretary. This is manifestly unjust.
Those who framed the Union sought to create a United Kingdom on 'equal
and liberal principles' capable of accommodating its entire people. Pitt
genuinely wished to bring Irish Roman Catholics within the body politic.
He believed, correctly, that the exclusion of Roman Catholics from the
Irish polity made Ireland inherently unstable. Castlereagh also viewed
the Union as the prelude to Catholic emancipation Pitt also believed in
the abolition of tithes and the state payment of Roman Catholic clergy.
It was his conviction that this package of measures would bind the Roman
Catholic population to the Union. Opposition, principally from the Earl
of Clare, the Irish Lord Chancellor, ensured that Catholic emancipation
did not actually accompany the Union. King George III thwarted its introduction
shortly after the Union came into operation. Pitt raised the issue of
Catholic emancipation with the King on 31 January 1801, nine days after
the first meeting of the United Parliament. When George III refused to
countenance it, Pitt announced his intention to resign on 3 February.
As a result, the King lost his ablest minister, along with Cornwallis,
the Lord Lieutenant, and Castlereagh.
Liam Kennedy and the late David S. Johnson have
argued that 'on balance, the Union was a benign rather than a malign framework
for the evolution of the Irish economy, and perhaps of Irish society more
generally.' This is not a view Nationalists would readily accept but the
reality is that the Union incorporated a society of retarded economic
development into the most advanced country in the world. The Union transformed
Irish society through the adaptation of British administrative solutions
to Irish conditions and far-reaching state intervention in a wide range
of areas, notably public health, education, the land question and economic
development.
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